Slave Graves (River Sunday Romance Mysteries Book 1) (29 page)

“At night each listens as the young girls are taken up to the sailors’ berths in the front of the ship and to the captain’s quarters in the stern of the ship. There are the cries and laughter as they try to please the men for a few more minutes of warmth in the cold night air. The smell is so bad that no one can sleep. A mist is now always present in the hold. A cloud of filth. Each sits in a pool of his own fluid, a pool of fluid that you can no longer control, that mixes with the filth from the others.

“After many days of this routine, and after the deaths of a great number of the children in the hold, the ship stops moving. There is a clanking noise of metal against wood coming from the front of the ship.

“They are locked in the darkness but have more hope. The ship has arrived in Maryland. Perhaps before the feast where they will be sacrificed there would be an opportunity for escape. Perhaps the children can slip under someone large. Some are faster than these men. In the village they had won the races against the other children. They feel the strength that arrives with hope coming back into their bodies.

“Above on the deck there are voices. There is some shouting. Footsteps and then silence.

“There is a faint glimmer at the edge of the ceiling. A tiny light that flickers. Then there is a smell like the great fire in the village, the burning wood, the pungent smell and the children smile thinking of the food that will soon be roasting on that fire. Some are also afraid that it may be the fire where they are going to be cooked. They hope for a chance to escape. Soon there is more smoke and their eyes begin to sting. They rub them but the irritation does not stop. There are lines of flickering light along several of the ceiling planks and some along the side of the room. There is the noise of screaming and pounding of fists. They hear more and more cracking of wood and a huge noise like a tree falling right above. When that happens there are sparks flying in the air but still there is nothing but the smoke and the tiny flickering lines. Then a plank falls from the ceiling and several of the chained people die screaming and there is a great amount of light. For a moment the children can see the timber work of the ceiling and brief patches of blue Maryland sky. Some had probably had been good at building things in the village. They had liked to watch the men who could do carpentry. It was their chosen trade. They liked to see woodwork. As the light plays with the carefully fitted boards above them, they are intrigued by how the English have fastened the boards together. They reach towards the timber above them but the chain on their ankles restrain them. The man and the children in front and beside fight to get away. Most of the children still do not understand why this is happening. Suddenly none cannot get enough air into their lungs. They are coughing. They all try to tear at the chains. The blood pumps out from the rips they force deeper and deeper into their skin. They begin their last naked screams as the fire touches their flesh.” Maggie stopped. She opened her eyes.

“Amen.” The Pastor looked out at the river. After a few moments, he shook his head in disgust. He walked toward his Cadillac, saying, “It’s time for a miracle.”

“The bell,” said Maggie.

“Lot of good that will do,” called back the Pastor. “No matter what we learn from the bell, after tomorrow, these children will be buried under tons of fresh concrete.”

The Pastor left them then. Frank and Maggie walked back up to the porch and sat there on the top step in the dark, looking toward the dark site, the light from inside the kitchen sparkling on the tiny leaves of the boxwoods, showing the underside of the leaves of the trees above them, the sky black but pinpointed with the tiny lights of stars. Out on the river Jake’s yacht began a slow trip back to River Sunday, its lights growing dim as it moved farther away.

He saw Maggie, her back up to the old porch post, her shorts and tee shirt filthy with mud, her hair tangled, and her earth covered feet pulled up. For a moment he thought how Mello would have looked sitting there. She would have had a soft blanket under her neat silk dress, her feet in carefully selected shoes that were as clean as the day she purchased them. Mello would not be as concerned about all this death they had discovered. Mello would be thinking where to sell an article about the find, about how to compute her billing for consulting hours, about how to find other work with the great Jake Terment’s huge real estate projects.

“Frank,” she would be saying here in this heat filled evening, “Frank, you have to be realistic. This is your chance to make some real money. You’ve met a player, Frank. Cash it in. Do him a favor and he’ll give you something in return. A few archeology jobs on Jake Terments other projects. They money you make would be nothing to a wealthy man like him. You could make enough to be set for life.”

The image of Mello vanished. Looking at Maggie made Frank feel wanted and warm, as if he could be loved. She turned her head and saw him looking at her. Her face was soft and she smiled at him. “You’re tired.”

“I guess we all are.” She touched the end of his fingers. “I’ve got some cream for the sore skin.”

They were in the kitchen when the telephone rang. Its abrupt metallic clatter was without harmony, strangely out of place among the steady insect buzz. On the phone was one of the Pastor’s council of elders.

“He wanted you to know, Dr. Light. It’s Pastor Allingham. He’s been hurt.”

“How, where?” Frank’s hand shook as he held the telephone.

“His car. Someone ran him off the road. He’s going to be all right. That big old Cadillac saved his life when he went into the ditch. The car was all tore up but he’s pretty much together.”

“How bad is he hurt?”

“He’ll be sore for a while.”

“Who did it?”

“He say they come up behind him. Happened too fast. He’s got a pretty good idea who done it but he ain’t got no proof for Mister Billy, the chief.”

“Where is the Pastor?”

“We’ve got him in a secure room at River Sunday Hospital.” When Frank hung up, he looked at Maggie sitting across from him in the dimly lighted room. She was staring at him, fear in her eyes for an instant, the first fear he could remember seeing in her face since he had met her so many years ago.

“Someone just tried to kill the Pastor,” Frank said, taking her hand.

The modern part of the River Sunday hospital was a multistory building of red brick. The oldest part of the hospital was, however, in the back and of mostly wood construction, and had been constructed in 1889 as a Confederate Soldiers Home. Over the years the facility had grown and had an emergency helicopter link with a larger facility in Baltimore. The hospital was situated in an area of River Sunday that had been developed around the local spur of the Pennsylvania Railroad. Rusty unused track sections of the once busy right of way still existed in the weeds at the back edge of the hospital land while along the front street were neat Victorian style houses, built by the businessmen who profited in the railroad days. These houses were owned by lawyers and doctors from Washington and Baltimore who for the most part kept expensive sailing yachts in the River Sunday harbor and used the houses as second homes and investments. Many had been painted in bright colors and surrounded the hospital like an invading army, one that owed no allegiance to memories of Yankees and Rebels.

Inside the hospital Frank noticed that several of Billy’s black police officers were sitting in the lobby along with their white counterparts.

“There’s a lot of attention on the Pastor’s safety,” he said to Maggie.

“Yeah, sure,” she said. “More likely for Jake’s movie star.”

Frank nodded. “I forgot about her.”

He asked at the desk for the Pastor. A woman with a warm smile directed him to a corridor on the right. As he and Maggie walked through the hospital, they saw that many of the sections and wards were worn with use and some had old plaster walls which might have dated to the construction of the original building. The Pastor’s room was in one of the older wards. Several black women in nurse uniforms stood guard by the door.

“We’re from the shipwreck site. The Pastor sent word,” Frank said to first of the women. She turned and went inside. She spoke to one of the men standing around the Pastor’s bed.

Frank and Maggie were given permission to enter the room. The Pastor had been assigned to a double room but the Pastor’s church elders had quickly made the room into a private area for their minister. The other resident, a farmer with a broken leg, had been moved out quickly without the hospital’s permission and was being treated several rooms away. On the other bed table there were still the magazines and open can of soda that the other occupant had been using.

The room was crowded with black men and women Frank had not seen before. Frank pulled on Maggie’s arm and edged the two of them to the foot of the Pastor’s bed. The Pastor was sitting up, piles of faded computer papers and printouts surrounding him on the covers, his left arm in a sling and a bandage on his forehead over his right eye.

The Pastor managed a weak smile when he saw them. “They gave me a lot of medicine. Makes it hard to speak.” He motioned weakly to the others around the bed. “Frank, these are the members of the council of elders from my church.” Frank nodded and introduced Maggie. The others returned the greeting with murmured hellos.

“Thank God you’re all right,” Maggie burst out.

“Jake didn’t get me yet,” the Pastor said, shifting his weight and grimacing in pain. “I’ll be all right in the morning. Don’t worry. I’ll be up to help you stop that bulldozer.”

“What did the police say?”

“There’s nothing they could do about it. Chief Billy told us his men couldn’t find any witnesses. There were no paint chips because the other car did not actually hit mine. Chief Billy did about what he was expected to do. Everybody in this room knows who did it, don’t we?” The Pastor winked at a large round faced man with silver hair.

“He won’t get away with this,” said the man, his words slow and forceful. The other men murmured assent to this statement. The women in the door said quietly, “Amen,” among themselves, reassuring each other with nodding heads as they spoke.

“Remember, Frank, at the site when I told you I had an idea,” said the Pastor.

Frank nodded.

The Pastor held up the printouts. “This is what’s left of our General Store. All our employees and friends, their addresses, hundreds of them all over the United States. “He smiled and leaned forward with some pain, “We’re calling them, asking them to come here, to demonstrate, to march with signs, just like we did back in the Sixties, to make him keep the site open.”

“When will they come?”

“Some have already called back and told us they were on the way. Others maybe will arrive tomorrow, more perhaps the next day. Only a few will come at first, but this time Jake will know we are here to stay, that he can’t force us out again.”

“What will you do?”

He smiled. “That’s the simplest part. We’ll just sit up there on his land. With us in the way he can’t pour his concrete.”

Frank woke up. He looked at his watch. It was past midnight. He had been asleep only a short time lying on the bench seat of the old truck. Something had woken him up, some noise. It was not one of Jake’s guards. Jake had taken them off the duty for some reason. He had thought it strange when no one had been at the gate as he and Maggie returned from the hospital.

He thought of Soldado. Maybe the old man was moving around at the site again with his dousing wires. He looked over the back of the truck seat. In this part of the farm yard the overhanging trees made it very dark, very black. He moved his head, trying to see around the cable rigging of the hoist on the back of the truck. In the distance he could see shadows of overgrown leaf filled trees and hanging vines. He could see no movement. He knew he would have to get out of the truck and walk over to the site.

Then he heard a noise again. This time he recognized the sound. It was not Soldado. It was a car horn, coming from the bridge. He shook his head. He looked at his watch. It was after midnight, late for someone to be blowing a car horn way out here in the country. Sometimes a farmer hit the railing at the bridge. Jake had said that. A drunken farmer returning from a night in town. Then he thought, maybe the person was hurt. Maybe he had better go see what it was all about.

He knew the next sound all too well. It was a rifle shot. He recognized the familiar sharp sound of an M16 rifle. In his mind he felt the recoil against his shoulder and smelled the pungent round going off. He sat up quickly and rubbed his eyes. In a moment he was standing at the back of the truck, looking towards the site, dressed only in his thin boxer shorts, his bare feet on the dew covered grass.

He looked back at the house, a dim shadow, the kitchen light off. Maggie was asleep there. The old bell had given the kitchen a certain marsh stink, from the odor coming out of the dirt on its surface. Maggie said that she was so tired she did not even care and had stumbled upstairs to where she had her sleeping bag. “My home with the squirrels,” she called it. It was still hot out in the night air. An insect of some kind flew by Frank’s right ear. He could hear its wings whirring as it swerved to miss his head. His skin was sticky in the heat.

He started towards the site. Not wanting to use a light, he walked the path from memory, toes feeling the way. As he came through the box bushes and walked into the area of the shipwreck, he could feel the air currents in the open space of the field. There was still not much light even from the stars and there was no moon. His eyes were becoming aware of shapes around him, lighted somewhat by the dim starlight. He decided to move slowly towards the riverbank. He knew from memory where the gridlines were located and passed beside them.

He saw a glint of the starlight off the pump engine on his right. He smiled. They’d start it first thing, try to get a little more water out. There might be time for a few more minutes of digging before the bulldozer started up. He reached the small riverbank. The tall reeds brushed against his bare skin, sharp against his feet. His foot snapped a small branch.